Passing 2 Measures, Senate Winds Down Gun Debate

Video The Times’s Michael Luo discusses whether attitudes toward guns have changed in America since the Newtown shooting, even though legislation died in the Senate this week.

By JEREMY W. PETERS

April 18, 2013

WASHINGTON — The last whimpers of the gun control debate in the Senate played out in anticlimactic fashion on Thursday as lawmakers began the process of formally moving on.

All that remained of a broad package of measures representing the most serious changes to the nation’s gun laws in 20 years were two amendments: one that would address mental health care, and another that would penalize states that divulge information about gun owners except under very specific circumstances like a criminal investigation.

Both passed overwhelmingly, the only two gun-related measures to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passage. The vote on the amendments has no practical effect, since the underlying legislation has no immediate prospect of passing.

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Despite the push from proponents of stricter gun regulations, the amendments that received the most support in two days of voting were not the ones that tightened restrictions on weapons purchases, but the ones that loosened them.

Fifty-seven senators voted on Wednesday to essentially nullify state laws that prohibit carrying concealed weapons. Fifty-six senators voted to restore gun ownership rights to veterans who have had them taken away.

In the end, only 54 voted for a compromise plan to expand background checks for gun buyers, 46 voted to ban high-capacity magazines and 40 voted to renew a ban on certain military-style rifles.

While supporters of plans to strengthen the regulation of gun purchases, including Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, vowed to keep the issue alive, the growing consensus on Capitol Hill was that any effort to resuscitate the legislation was far away.

Senate Democrats believe that their best option is to put their bill in the procedural equivalent of a deep freeze. Mr. Reid is expected to exercise an option that allows him to put the bill in an indefinite hold so he can bring it back up later.

“Make no mistake: this debate is not over,” Mr. Reid said Thursday. “This is not the end of the fight. Republicans are in an unsustainable position — crosswise with 9 out of 10 Americans.”

After the series of gun control amendments went down to defeat on Wednesday, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who played a central role in the early efforts to bring together a bipartisan coalition to support stronger background checks, said he did not see a viable path forward in the near term, but remained optimistic about the months ahead.

Asked on Thursday what the next step for the gun bill could be, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, responded, “That’s a good question.”

The leading Republican who joined with Democrats to forge a bipartisan background check bill, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, told a local newspaper that he was ready to deal with other matters. “I did the best I could,” he told The Morning Call of Allentown. “I wish it had passed, but the Senate has spoken, and these things happen.”

Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that has gone after lawmakers with aggressive advertising campaigns, said Thursday that efforts by his organization and others would not cease.

“Today and for the foreseeable future, mayors and supporters and survivors and some pretty outraged citizens will be letting senators know they’re paying attention,” he said. “And their memories are long.”

Senate Democrats were also looking at what options they might have to force a change in Senate rules that would make it harder for Republicans to subject everything to a 60-vote threshold instead of a simple majority vote.

“In matters like this, the majority ought to rule,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland.

But the Senate was already preparing to take up other issues. Next on the agenda: a bill that would allow states to collect sales tax for items sold online.

But in the Senate, with its tangled knot of procedural hurdles, little moves forward without a fight.

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is preventing his colleagues from quickly taking up another matter because he objected when Democrats asked for a routine unanimous consent agreement to dispense with the gun bill. He said Thursday that he would not cooperate because Democrats refused to put his background check bill, which is opposed by gun control groups, up for a vote.

“There’s only one way to get background checks, and they don’t want to vote on it,” he said.